John
Dortmunder attempts to break fellow professional thief (and
occasional actor) Alan Greenwood out of prison. Greenwood plans to
change his name to Alan Grofield after the escape. A
professional thief named Alan Grofield appears in Westlake’s Parker
novels, written under the pen name “Richard Stark,” and is also
the protagonist of four other novels written under the Stark
pseudonym. Can the two Alan Grofields be the same person? Another
Dortmunder novel, Nobody’s
Perfect,
claims Greenwood became a successful television actor under his
original name. This seems exceedingly unlikely, since Greenwood would
be wanted by the police for his prison escape. Since both the Parker
and Dortmunder series have links to the CU, it is more likely the
reference in Nobody’s
Perfect is
a distortion, and the two Grofields are indeed one and the same.
I'm very proud that I was able to reconcile Greenwood and Grofield. While I don't think this speculation would work if both series did not have prior links to the CU, it seems almost certain there are such links.
ReplyDeleteWe still need to explain the fictional Parker book that Dortmunder use a heist blueprint in Jimmy the Kid.